Landmarks Preservation Commission June 20, 2000; Designation List 315 LP-2062

BEDFORD PARK CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 2988 Bainbridge Avenue (aka 301 East 20!51 Street), . Built 1891-92; Edgar K. Bourne, architect.

Landmark Site: Borough of Bronx Tax Map Block 3299, Lot 1.

On April 25, 2000, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation as a Landmark of the Bedford Park Congregational Church and the proposed designation of the related Landmark Site (Item No. 1). The hearing had been duly advertised in accordance with the provisions of law. Eight witnesses spoke in favor of the designation including the pastor, the President of the Board of Trustees, and three members of the church and representatives of the Historic Districts Council and Bronx Landmarks Task Force. There were no speakers in opposition to the designation. The Commission has received letters of support for this designation from Councilwoman June Eisland and Congressman Eliot L. Engel.

Summary Erected in 1891-92 to the ~esigns of Edgar K. Bourne, the Bedford Park Congregational Church survives as a rare example in City of a small rustic late-nineteenth-century suburban church. Bedford Park Congregational exemplifies such churches in its asymmetrical massing accentuated by a picturesque tower and other projections and in its incorporation of architectural forms and features associated with Queen Anne and Shingle style buildings. It is constructed of rough-dressed fieldstone and features a shingled Richardsonian Romanesque style tower, squat buttresses, round-arched windows with voussoirs, and a timber-framed Queen Anne style porch. The plan ofthe building, which includes a vestibule, Sunday school meeting room, and auditorium­ plan worship space, is typical of Congregational churches from the period and is expressed in the exterior design of the building. Bedford Park was a planned suburban community for middle-class families developed in the 1880s after the model of the renowned London suburb of the same name. Founded in 1889 by the prominent Congregational minister, Shearjashub Bourne, who was the architect's father, the Bedford Park Congregational Church was the first major social institution in the neighborhood and has remained a vital part of the community.

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Photo: c. 1978 DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

Bedford Park' Park was built up with "pretty cottages" in the Queen In the 1860s, the neighborhood now known as Anne style, planned to be "convenient and Bedford Park lay entirely within the vast property comfortable" as well as "unique" in design. 5 The owned by financier Leonard Jerome's Jerome Park houses ranged in size from cottages of seven or eight Villa Site Improvement Company. A noted rooms to much bigger structures, "more like ... sportsman, Jerome helped to organize the American mansions."6 They were located on large lots that Jockey Club, which leased a 230-acre tract from the provided ample space for gardens. Near the railroad improvement company in 1866 for a racetrack, station, shops, built low and on ground apart from the Jerome Park [erected on the site of present-day residences so as not to mar "the villa effect," Lehman College]. To ensure that the racetrack would provided such "immediate domestic necessities as be easily accessible and to further development in the those from butcher and druggist."7 area, Jerome persuaded the Township of West Farms Skillful marketing and the promise of additional to finance a paved boulevard, Central A venue (now amenities, such as the opening of the New York ), linking the Central (Macomb's Botanical Garden in 1891 , helped to make Bedford Dam) Bridge to Central A venue in Yonkers. Jerome Park a success. By 1890, the development had about then began selling off his other Bronx properties 560 residents,